Over the years, we've occasionally run an "Ask OSNews" feature, wherein a reader asks us a question and we answer it publicly. Lately I've really been enjoying Slate's Dear Prudence advice column and the ever-interesting Straight Dope, and I thought we should see if we can get more OSNews readers to submit questions, and turn Ask OSNews into a more-regular thing. If your question falls outside of our domain expertise, we'll try to track down an expert to help out. And of course, our responses will always be supplemented by further advice from OSNews readers in the comments. Questions are welcome on any topic ranging from OSes and computing to science and geek culture. Contact us with your questions. (Please include "Ask OSNews" in the subject). Today's question is from a young student in Hungary who's seduced by the faraway siren song of Apple's marketing and wonders, "should I switch?"

Still the difference in price between a PC bought in the US, and one Europe is much smaller then an Apple bought in the US v Europe.

Again, Apple doesn't distribute them - a local company does; there are factors way outside their control and in a lot of cases it is your local laws that prohibit parallel importing of products which also drive up costs - especially when the given product is a niche product in your country and thus there aren't the economies of scale to reduce the cost of importing, supporting and selling it.

New Zealand is probably lucky in that Apple consolidates their New Zealand and Australian operations in Australia which give them a market of around 25million people; couple that with the fact that it uses English with the standard keyboard lay out - the cost of doing business is a heck of a lot cheaper.

If Europe had a common language with a common set of taxes, regulations etc. then it would be possible to group all of Europe under the same banner, use a single distributor , support centre, sales website etc for the whole continent, and thus you'd get the savings - since none of those things are going to happen, you're stuck with higher prices.